Kiss from a Rose
by Shiraume
Summary: A thousand years' worth of shades, through the lives of six different people. UPDATE: Part 1 through 3 posted (Fuji, Tezuka, Yukimura). Vampire AU, angst, romance, horror. WARNING: adult situations, violence, dark themes. Also, these vampires don't sparkle, thank you very much. PLEASE heed the rating and the warnings!
1. Fuji Syuusuke

_A thousand years' worth of shades, through the lives of six different people._

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Please heed the rating, the warnings and the pairings in case any of those isn't your cup of tea.

A _Prince of Tennis_ AU fanfiction in a series of six short ficlets (1,000~1,500 words per ficlet). Vampire AU, angst, romance, horror. This one should be considered hard R for overall content, including psychological/emotional. You've been warned. Fuji/Tezuka, Yukimura/Fuji/Sanada, Fuji/Yuuta, Fuji/Ryoma. WARNING: adult situations, violence, dark themes, and sort-of-incest. Also, these vampires don't sparkle, thank you very much.

Originally written in 2005, and set entirely to Seal's "Kiss from a Rose" which...probably ought to constitute a warning by itself.

First up: Fuji, in 1,000 words.

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**Kiss from a Rose: Fuji Syuusuke**

[May 2005 :: Posted April 2013]

_...And if I should fall along the way  
I've been kissed by a rose on the grey._

One thousand years.

One thousand years weren't enough to erase the broken glass of betrayal he saw in Yukimura's eyes.

"How could you?" Yukimura had whispered to him, his voice low and harsh, cradling the human – now no longer human – in his arms. It was the first time Fuji believed Yukimura hated him. More than hated him. Loathed Fuji so much that revenge was not even considered, the passion of his fury and hate drowning out everything else, even the need to avenge his grievance. In the end, Yukimura chose the most perfect punishment for his betrayal: he did nothing.

And the irony was that Yukimura likely did not intend to punish him in any way. Had never intended that.

When he turned Yuuta, one of his own kin, it had finally hit him. The bond of turning had taken him by surprise so much that he withdrew from everything, including his own childe. That day, he found out the hard way how a true blood-bond with a childe could alter a vampire forever. How it bound a sire to his childe, heart and soul, for all eternity. It was then he understood what his betrayal might have felt like to Yukimura, a treachery from a childe most deeply bonded to him. Along with his newfound understanding, guilt forced him back to Yuuta's side every so often, to check on him, but the same guilt forced his eyes away each time, unable to face what he had done. Yukimura was less..._human_, for a lack of better term, than Fuji had ever been. He was aware Yukimura never looked at him the way he looked at Yuuta, but a childe was a childe: an inescapable reminder of his sins, the consequence of his choices, a creation he would always be responsible for. An eternity wouldn't give him time enough to run from that.

A century later, in a remote cloister in Europe, Fuji sensed a thread of inevitability when he first met Tezuka. Tezuka, a demon-hunter who was neither a human nor a demon, one whom an accident of fate had granted indefinite lifespan, who possessed power so like the hell-spawns he hunted. Fuji, by then a vampire of many, many centuries, was more powerful than Tezuka, but Tezuka's power nonetheless took him by surprise. Not the chill of a demon's power, that; Tezuka burned through his vampiric senses like a drop of sun in the darkness. The hot blaze called to him, and Fuji felt a thrill he never felt before or since. For a small eternity he gazed at Tezuka across the rows of stone crosses, fragrant roses over the graves perfuming the air. When Tezuka suddenly lunged, he grabbed Tezuka's left hand almost like an afterthought before it thrust home to his heart, halting the cold, cold iron a scant inch from his skin. Fuji leaned closer to look into those eyes, fearless and dangerous still even in the grip of imminent death, and wanted as he had never wanted before. So instead of taking him there and then or killing him, Fuji spared the hunter for a modified game of tag, chasing and being chased, with stakes both uncertain and dangerously high. If the intervening years also added the weight of debts and mutual aids and not-quite bond to those stakes, neither of them was willing to put a name to what lay in between.

Ryoma was something else altogether. A toy that reveled in being one, a human who raced towards the coming storm precisely because he knew the danger. His interest in Ryoma wasn't a surprise, but that his prey knowingly pushed him in turn both amused him and exasperated him. Each time they met, each time Fuji embraced Ryoma, Fuji was never sure if the boy would leave his arms alive that night, to play their game again next time. What perhaps surprised him was that there continued to be a next time. Time and time again.

Fuji arched into the harsh press of Yukimura inside him. Their need for each other was not addictive, as his irresistible attraction to Tezuka was, or recreational, like his games with Ryoma were. It was a simple need which both acknowledged and accepted. Like their existence, like their need for blood, their mutual need was a facet of their shared life, shadowed and flawed as it was. The heat that raked through his body, balanced just enough by the pang of Yukimura's teeth on his throat, was something he couldn't imagine doing without. Fuji looked up, watching Yukimura as he surged, suspended in his own pleasure, before sinking down to Fuji as gracefully as the nightfall. And Fuji received Yukimura in his arms, just like he had always done since the fateful night that bound him to this eternal existence, to Yukimura.

His preternatural hearing picked up a sound just outside their door. He extended a tendril of his thought, caressing and inviting. His overture was met with something akin to exasperation, which masked a hidden wariness of jealousy. Masked well, but not perfectly. Fuji threaded his fingers through Yukimura's hair, reaching into Yukimura's mind. It was easy to do when they were connected like this, more intimately than by their flesh alone. Yukimura's thoughts flowed against his, fluid yet heavy, and finally, the door opened and Sanada entered.

_Are you jealous?_ was the thought Fuji sent Sanada's way, clear as spoken words. It was almost a ritual, each time they found each other like this, Yukimura tangled in Fuji's embrace and Sanada coming to them. And as usual, Sanada merely snorted. At times, Fuji wondered who he was addressing the question to, and about whom. The question, and the answer if there ever was one, was even less clear when he pressed into Sanada, Yukimura still wrapped around them both. When the pleasure stole his thoughts and his breath, the question, too, became silent, like the stillness of the night around them.

And Fuji slept.

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_**Notes: **_I'd avoided posting this forever because...well, subject content. But recently someone asked to see it, and I thought, why the hell not? So I slapped on some edits and here we are.

I don't know if I'll still respect myself in the morning. But for now, I REGRET NOTHING. ;)


	2. Tezuka Kunimitsu

Second one: Tezuka, in 1,292 words! Same warnings apply as before.

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**Kiss from a Rose: Tezuka Kunimitsu**

[May 2005 :: Posted April 2013]

_You remain, my power, my pleasure, my pain  
To me you're like a growing addiction that I can't deny._

It was impossible to miss Fuji even in the pitch darkness of the graveyard. Fuji's power radiated outward, filtered through iron restraint as it was, burning like an icy beacon in the night. This was the most powerful vampire he had encountered, the oldest.

If he was honest to himself, Tezuka could admit that he had sorely underestimated the power of Fuji's eyes. When he first looked into those blue eyes speckled with the unnatural gold of the vampire kind, Tezuka, despite not believing in gods or destiny, felt what he could only describe as a meeting with his fate. And he knew then that this would be the most dangerous being he would ever face in his life. That if he lost to this creature, he would lose all and everything that he was.

Surely it was some higher force he never believed in that guided his hand that night: so certain, so sure, in utter contrast to the frozen stillness of his mind. Tezuka had moved faster and surer than he ever had in his long life as a demon hunter. Yet Fuji's right hand firmly grasped his left wrist, easily halting the iron stake scant centimeters from his heart, in a touch so cold it burned. The storm in those blue, blue eyes was so surprising that Tezuka froze, and the rational part of his mind truly believed it was over when Fuji leaned closer. That certainty somehow calmed him, holding him perfectly still. The battle had been fought and lost. His life was forfeit.

And he blinked in surprise as Fuji disappeared, dissolved into the darkness surrounding them. The next time he saw Fuji, he challenged Fuji again, this time a battle of magic as well as a physical combat, and lost. "You'll need to take me a little more seriously," Fuji whispered to him before disappearing. Fuji's cool lips brushed against the side of his neck with the same burning touch and Tezuka had to suppress a shiver, understanding at last the absolute seductive charm the vampire kind wielded over humans. The third time they found each other, they were in the middle of a vast wilderness far from civilization. And Tezuka let loose for the first time and called on all of the power he'd kept bound so tightly under control for so long. The freedom of letting go, that exhilarating rush as raw power swelled and flowed inside him, and feeling Fuji's power match his, was a kind of ecstasy that he could not even begin to understand, let alone explain, and he thought Fuji looked almost as shaken as he was near the end. Their fight had left the entire area within five-mile radius devastated, and it was Fuji who was left standing, obviously still with enough strength left to move. Fuji walked over to where he sat, exhausted and drained in more than just a physical sense, and trailed fingers lightly over his cheek in a touch that might have been more than gentle, might even have been tender. Fuji's fingers were warm for once, and the light in Fuji's face made him look almost alive. And Tezuka would have shuddered in an impossible mixture of terror and anticipation, had he been able to move. But Fuji merely gave him a strange smile before disappearing without a word.

Through the years, Tezuka met Fuji over and over again. Although neither of them had been specifically looking for the other, each encounter brought a sense of expectation and of being expected. Being a long-lived vampire seemed to attract as many enemies as being a demon hunter did. Nevertheless, several times, Fuji helped him and even saved his life once, and Tezuka's sense of honor compelled him to return the favor. And their strange ties of not quite enmity or camaraderie persisted, growing stronger each time they met. Tezuka did not understand why Fuji felt the need to keep him alive, and he must, since Fuji had already had several chances to kill him or simply leave him to die. He knew he was growing stronger as time passed, becoming more of a threat to Fuji, and surely Fuji knew it also. If all this was for amusement, it was an amusement that had stakes much, much higher than their lives.

It was eight score years or more after he first met Fuji that he learned Fuji was actually a companion to another vampire, one older and even more powerful: Yukimura. If Fuji was calm, Yukimura was impossibly serene, observing everything and nothing at once. For all the attention Yukimura paid him, Tezuka might as well have been a speckle of dust floating in the air. Yukimura's dark eyes were severe and kind and ageless, and the power of his presence could almost convince Tezuka that this being was indeed beyond the laws and mores of the mortal realm but belonged to a more ancient, purer kind of justice. But only until he noticed Fuji, who looked strangely younger at Yukimura's side, looking more like the human he must had been once. Or maybe it was that Fuji was standing next to Yukimura, who was too beautiful, too _perfect_, that there wasn't a shred of humanity left, if there ever had been. Then, a colder and more logical side of his mind whispered, with chilling reason mercilessly untempered by poetry, that vampires were notoriously territorial, and would never travel in company unless related by blood. Vampiric blood, flowing from a sire to a childe.

He charged before his mind consciously thought to attack. Fuji's eyes widened for a fraction of a second in naked horror that nearly brought him up short, and that instant was all Fuji needed. Tezuka struggled in Fuji's grip unthinkingly for a moment, then froze, realizing Yukimura, who never once stirred, was now staring at him. Tezuka felt Fuji's hands spasm around his, and thought for one dizzy moment that Yukimura probably would have had less trouble crushing an ant under his heel stopping Tezuka himself. Fuji didn't need to protect Yukimura, had never once even looked in Yukimura's way since the moment Tezuka moved.

The sudden surge of anger startled him. But it was a directionless thing, uncertain of its target, and he barely reacted when Fuji left with Yukimura, although he felt Yukimura's eyes on him long after the ancient vampire disappeared.

Tezuka was absolutely certain that Yukimura deliberately let him watch them in bed, not long after their first meeting. Allowed him to see Fuji in the kind of wild abandon he had only ever seen in that one memorable battle between them. And the picture of Fuji, head thrown back in release, the muscles of his neck taut, with a single drop of blood making it way down, over his heart, teasing his nipple, was burned into his mind like a red-hot brand, bringing with its memory a phantom pain whenever he recalled it. Yukimura's perfectly shaped lips, stained crimson, had smirked at him knowingly. Yet those dark eyes, glimmering above Fuji's shoulder, were not unkind as they met Tezuka's; they might even have held a question, although what it was Tezuka could not guess.

His world changed, but Fuji did not. Four centuries were time enough for the world to morph into something completely unrecognizable to Tezuka. But throughout it all Fuji remained a constant, their hunt and chase connecting them like a thread through time and space. And sometimes, Tezuka wondered if that was why Fuji did not kill him. Hunted him, but never killed him, because what they had between them - whatever it might be - was the only thing left that bound both of them, however tenuously, to a semblance of life.


	3. Yukimura Seiichi

Third up: Yukimura. 1,552 words. This part was originally subtitled "Shades of the Past" – shades as in shadowed places and ghosts, yes.

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**Kiss from a Rose: Yukimura Seiichi**

[June 2005 :: Posted July 2013]

_There used to be a greying tower alone on the sea.  
You became the light on the dark side of me._

The first thing Yukimura noticed about Fuji was his eyes. Even as a mortal, Fuji had unforgettable eyes – more azure than the waters of Mediterranean, the shade even and spotless as the cloudless autumn sky. Those eyes were magnetic under the flickering torchlight. Yukimura remembered standing in the shadows between columns, transfixed, as if Fuji, not he, were the vampire.

When they first met Fuji was a young man just beginning to blossom. Yet his eyes were ageless even then. Yukimura watched him with the fascination of a gardener over a particularly well-formed blossom, not once entertaining the thought of making Fuji his own. He had never made any mortal his own that way then, sharing immortal blood to stopper mortal death. He was simply drawn to the beauty of Fuji's eyes, the grace of his movements, and the rare brilliance of his spirit. Yukimura watched Fuji whisper secret things, sinful things to a beautiful young woman, her pure white tunic barely stifled under her dark cloak and the cover of the night. The young woman's rich brown hair was glossy, free of the usual constricting braids, her brown eyes dark and depthless, skin alight with life and passion. Her tall figure encased in dark cloak was striking in the mist as she stole away before the first light, back to her holy prison. They were siblings by marriage, Fuji and his young woman, although looking at the resemblance around their perfectly formed mouths, the arch of brows and straightness of the nose, Yukimura suspected a blood-relation the two might have known themselves.

Fuji had an image of her fashioned in marble by a Greek sculptor Yukimura introduced. As the marble gave way to the smoothness of her features, Yukimura often caught Fuji looking at the image, longing and pain in his eyes. Just before the base was inscribed with dedication, a human disaster struck the brother and the sister. Someone had accused her of taking a lover, and she was condemned for breaking her vow to the immortal virgin she served. Yukimura thought it another case of mortal foolishness, unfortunate that it would take as its victim such a charming creature, but inevitable, for those with sights as dim as the night about them.

She never revealed the name of her lover.

Partly out of pity and partly from respect, Yukimura helped Fuji see the young woman one last time before her sentence was carried out. Just before dawn, when Yukimura gently led Fuji away, with her eyes shimmering with a kind of devotion and strength Yukimura had never seen in a mortal, she said with conviction: _Live, brother. Live for me._

By that time Yukimura was powerful enough to brave the sunlight, at least in the shelter of shadows. From the shades, he watched Fuji watching his sister being entombed alive, with a little bit of water and bread so her hallowed body would not be subject to the horror of starvation. No guards touched her as she, unflinching, descended the steps to her unhallowed grave, her person still inviolate, untouchable. And she had never looked more beautiful than now, cloaked only in her steadfast dignity and pride. Yet it was Fuji's suffering that drew Yukimura's eyes. The boy's face was as pale as death, the blue eyes wide and staring, fractured in a pain he could not even begin to fathom. And Fuji stood so still, so perfectly still, not even a tremor betraying whatever he was feeling inside. At that moment, Yukimura couldn't help but see Fuji as a sapling, a young yearling of a shoot that knew the oncoming storm would mercilessly break it in half, yet stood in defiance, acceptance or both. There was a kind of unparalleled strength and brilliance to his pain, something that made him bright and sharp and dangerous. The allure of Fuji's presence, that wildness raging behind that frozen stillness, was so overpowering that Yukimura nearly lost his control and took him there and then.

That night, Yukimura went to Fuji. And seeing the sharpness of the blue gaze undiminished even by the consuming agony behind them, Yukimura gave him the choice. Fuji never told him why he accepted Yukimura's offer, but Yukimura had his guesses. It was the young Vestal's mortal brother who loved her, but it was the immortal who was once her brother that inscribed and dedicated the statue. The mortal boy had a poetic epithet prepared for the likeness of his sister. The immortal that was left behind inscribed but two words: Lucilla Pulcheria.

The way Fuji yielded to him was intoxicating, all wiry strength that pushed and pushed, then suddenly melting under his hands. Fuji was irrevocably, unquestionably his, and for a long time Yukimura never thought he would have another that would fascinate him as much as Fuji did. But in the distant islands in the East, Yukimura did find a mortal that entranced him even more than Fuji did. And this man, unlike all others Yukimura had ever known, learned his nature and his secrets yet accepted and embraced all he was. Fuji had agreed to be Yukimura's for his own reasons, but Sanada was his simply by choice. Such trust and willingness from one so strong and proud was a heady rapture.

Never in his wildest dreams did it occur to Yukimura that he would need to guard himself and his heart from Fuji. Yukimura had never thought to hide what he felt, what he thought, from his first (and then only) childe. Thus it came as an appalling attack, one that penetrated his heart with sickening precision, when Fuji went against his explicit wish and turned Sanada. It was his fault, he supposed, that he lost control and drained Sanada nearly to the point of death. However, out of respect for the first and only mortal who had given him his heart willingly and without hesitation, Yukimura had promised not to turn him, even if he were to lose Sanada to death. And Fuji knew this better than anyone when he slipped inside Sanada's room and offered his immortal blood. Had he not known that Sanada must had chosen to accept, that Sanada was content with his own choice, Yukimura could not guess what he might have done to Fuji.

It was only after he found himself so deeply in love that he began to notice what he never felt the need to see before, about Fuji, about himself, and about the human world. He had reached out to Fuji in what amounted to a selfish reason. He'd wanted to keep Fuji exactly the way he was forever, as beautiful and brilliant and dangerous as that moment the earth closed over the young Vestal. But Fuji was not Yukimura, and had accepted the immortality and its sins differently than Yukimura had. Sanada, too, had been a miscalculation, at least as far as Fuji was concerned. In his assurance that he knew his childe's every thought, Yukimura had missed what was in Fuji's heart. Once Yukimura began paying attention to him, not as an extension of himself but as _Fuji_, he began to see what might have been the fatal mistake for both of them. And a part of him began to regret, not that he made Fuji his own, but how it happened and why. Fuji's needs were different from his, and he had never imagined Fuji's needs might include something he would never think of giving.

Perhaps that was why a part of him was relieved when he saw Tezuka for the first time. Another part of him, however, was inches away from erasing Tezuka's existence for good. Fuji never responded to him that way, not with that passionate gleam of life, that burning attraction, that aching desire. Perhaps it was jealousy that made him lure Tezuka to watch as he took Fuji, taking Fuji's body as well as his veiled heart, leaving it bare, and have Tezuka witness every heartbeat of their wild movements. Perhaps it was because he wanted to be able to entrust Tezuka with his childe, one that meant more to him than the waking world, second only to Sanada. But for that Tezuka had to know the full depth of Fuji's soul, understand it, and taste its hidden sweetness and the underlying bitterness, everything. Only then could Tezuka hope to hold Fuji, hold and not hurt, and maybe, just maybe, even protect Fuji.

Perhaps the greatest irony was that what Yukimura hoped Tezuka would be able to protect Fuji from was Fuji himself, one that was Yukimura's own making. Like ashes in his mouth, difficult to swallow, to know there were parts of Fuji he could no longer protect or even touch, parts that were no longer his, even if he was their origin and parent. But Tezuka...Tezuka could, without trying or possibly even without knowing. Tezuka could, and it was all that mattered. So Yukimura watched, entwined in Sanada, in Fuji, in Tezuka, in Yuuta, in Echizen, in everything Fuji had touched and had touched Fuji and shaped Fuji as much as Fuji shaped them. As the world around them shifted and changed, Yukimura did not, nor did his silent vigil over his childe, centuries stretching into millennia.

Time was, after all, all he had.

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_**Note:**_ This series was originally written in 2005, and even then, with more florid language than I generally favor. Upon rethinking it this year, I left them largely alone.

All names here are assumed names (with possible exception of Ryoma). Fuji is originally from Rome, from late Republic or early principate. Mention of white clothing and braids was a hint for a Vestal virgin, who wore white wool and special braided hairdo called _seni crines_. Vestal virgins were extremely important to Roman culture and were accorded great honors and privileges during their term (30 years), but if found guilty of breaking their vow (which was rare), they were put to death. The lover, if exposed, was also executed.

Lucilla Pulcheria can be translated as "beautiful light."


End file.
